River Landscape near Henley-on-Thames by Thomas James Soper

#18263: River Landscape near Henley-on-Thames by Thomas James Soper
British, 19th century
Canvas: Height 102cm, width 85cm, depth 3cm
Frame: Height 116cm, width 96cm, depth 8cm

This upright oil on canvas by Thomas James Soper shows tall elms above an ivy-clad bridge near Henley-on-Thames, with ducks on the river below.
The composition is built around a stand of elms that fills the upper left of the canvas, the foliage worked in layered greens and ochres against a blue sky with banks of white cloud. Beneath them, a low stone bridge of three arches crosses the river. It is overgrown with ivy and fenced with a rustic timber rail, over which a man in a brimmed hat and a girl in a pink bonnet lean to look at the water.
White ducks swim on the still surface below, which reflects the bank and the sky, and a few stones and a stretch of shingle lie in the foreground shallows. At the right, a sandy lane runs past grazing sheep towards a red-tiled cottage with a brick chimney, half-hidden among the trees.
The painting is presented in a carved giltwood frame in the Rococo manner, with shell cartouches at the corners and centres, scrolling foliage and trailing flowers. A plaque on the lower rail is inscribed ‘T. J. Soper / Henley on Thames’.
River and woodland views of southern England form a large part of Thomas James Soper’s work, and he was particularly drawn to the Thames and to the countryside of Devon. Based in London, he was active from 1836 to 1890. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836 with a scene at Southgate, and went on to show there and at the British Institution, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Institute of Painters. His Devon subjects included Berry Pomeroy Castle, exhibited at the Academy in 1843. His landscapes look back to Constable’s rural scenes, though with quicker and more visible brushwork. The plaque on the frame associates this view with Henley-on-Thames, the Oxfordshire market town on the river. With its elms, bridge and figures pausing by the water, the painting reflects the mid-19th-century demand for rural landscape among a growing middle-class public, a market also served by painters such as Thomas Creswick and Alfred Vickers.

$9,750